`Happy Trails` Leads To Shootout

A famous salutation-``Happy trails to you``-is one that travelers to Portsmouth, Ohio, during the first week in June are likely to hear again and again.

That`s because of the annual Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Collectors Association Convention, Festival and Regatta. There`ll be no classy yachts at this regatta, but there will be sternwheelers, hot-air balloons and a flotilla of beds racing through the city streets. It`s $25 a bed to enter the race; the winner gets $1,000.

There`ll be tours of Roy`s boyhood home-that`s right, the King of the Cowboys was born in Ohio-and of the Roy Rogers Hometown Exhibit, which contains just about every sort of Roy-and-Dale thingamajig, including a room devoted to such lesser lights of the Western pantheon as Lash LaRue.

That`s not to mention the ``shootout`` on Roy Rogers Esplanade, the Miss Portsmouth Scholarship Pageant, Western hayrides, breakfasts with the stars, a petting zoo and, as they say, lots more. Roy and Dale may attend; others on the guest list who are more definite include Clayton ``Lone Ranger`` Moore, Will ``Sugarfoot`` Hutchins, Jock ``Yancy Derringer`` Mahoney, Eddie Dean and LaRue.

Those are just the bare bones. Unlike Roy`s and Dale`s bootprints at the esplanade, not every detail has been set in stone. You can get more information from the Portsmouth Convention and Visitors Bureau, 729 6th St., Box 509, Portsmouth, Ohio 45662; phone 614-353-1116.